5 conspiracy theories in football 

#2 1958 WC was a hoax

World Cup 1958 was considered as fake by some

What the hell? I know right. This is a conspiracy theory that still makes people scratch their heads due to the extremity of the claim. The 1958 World Cup witnessed the genesis of the 17-year-old would-be legend, Pele. The Brazilian made a name for himself in the tournament and scored a brace in Brazil’s 5-2 victory in the final against hosts Sweden.

But here is the fun part: according to a Swedish historian, Bor Jacques de Waern, the 1958 World Cup was fake. Yes, FAKE. He claims that the World Cup didn’t happen in Sweden, but rather in the United States of America as a part of a CIA experiment to test the power of televised programs over the masses.

In a documentary released in 2002 named Konspiration 58, directed by Johan Lofstedt, Bor suggested that the buildings in the background of the stadiums didn’t look like the ones in Sweden and that the matches took place in America.

“The United States needed to test television’s power to influence people,” says De Wærn, who worked in the Swedish national archives for over twenty years. “It was a part of the Cold War that was raging at the time. I call it the ‘media race’.

“Right after the championship in 1958, I began collecting thousands of documents, photos and texts.

"I found one after another that pointed to the strange fact that the 1958 World Cup had never taken place.”